And then another blockchain was tracked. (the 90m one)
And transactions all end all being chopped up, and redistriuted, with the largest amounts going into wallets like this:
Is blockchain.info set up as an effective store of consensus around tracking "evil" addresses? If not, is anyone else doing that (publicly)? I am sure the NSA and cousins are studying the blockchain carefully.
Well, I don't own BTC myself, am not in the BTC community and I'm not NSA even :) But judging by what the internets says.
Yeah, this seems to be the the case in the BTC community to monitor and track suspicious activity. I've also seen a 00666 BTC transaction being used as a community effort to mark the blockchain. The number in the amount should need no further elaboration for the intention.
That
It's just some dude tweaking out on meth in that thread. Interesting to see the difference between traditional amphetamines and meth. The motivation seems to be there, but incoherent and full of conspiracy theories too.
I'm not too worried about this since you can be pretty sure the aggrieved will probably be able to track down the thief by examining the block chain. That is one nice thing about bit coin: it exists outside financial regulation and so penalties for transgressions like this can be handled extrajudicially. My paycheck comes today and I'm really upset I have to pay rent and not just invest the whole thing in more bit coins.
Well, those SMP people stole money from drug dealers some of which may be part of or at least have ties to organised crime. I believe people like that have ways of dealing with something like this if know names and addresses.
I'm not sure if it's that easy. There are dozens of sites that allow you to mix your coins - so that it's harder to track them back.
In theory, all it needs is one single non-cooperating gambling or dice site: 1) Split your illegal income up into 10 different addresses 2) Use each address for gambling with a 10 percent chance of winning and 1000% return in case of winning 3) Repeat a couple of times.
So the user got lucky once. The thief can repeat that process as often as he likes. He only needs to succeed a single time. And even if he doesn't succeed the evidence is pretty thin and might not be enough for a prosecution.
He can repeat it all he likes, he's just making the operator of Bitcoin Fog a millionaire. You cannot launder 96k btc without getting 96k btc from somewhere else, by definition; if you 'launder' without >96kbtc of other people's money, you just get your own coins sent to a new address, and you could've done that yourself for free.
Now, maybe he could manage the full 96k btc if he used multiple laundries over many months, but that is time he does not have.
That's a huge myth that you can track the money just because the transactions are public. I saw this simple example:
Imagine wallets A,B,F,X,Z.
A contains your money.
B contains somebody else's money.
Move the money as follows, 1BTC in each transaction:
A -> F
B -> F
F -> X
F -> Z
Now you have 1BTC in X and in Z, but there's absolutely no way of telling where they came from. All you can say is they came from F. From now on X and Z are anonymous.
And then, you can simply sell bitcoins for cash on localbitcoins. It's pretty untraceable.
Exactly, unless they are dumb enough to dump the coins in a major exchange which can 'freeze' the funds nobody will ever be able to trace them. As for the owners being doxxed they already failed opsec day they opened with czech css comments giving away the obscure framework they used. I'm sure they git cloned directly to their boxes on clearnet too.
That system only works as long as all parties agree to the concept of "innocent until proven guilty". If one party is willing to take the stance of "guilty until proven innocent", the entire scheme falls apart.
For instance, let's say that A wants to send bitcoins stolen from G to X and B wants to send other bitcoins to Z. G simply approaches F and says "You stole my bitcoins. As punishment, I'm going to chain you to a mattress in a 6x6 cell until you confess." That leaves F two choices. F can stand for his principles, keep quiet, and serve as an object lesson to all other potential anonymizers.
However, if F doesn't want to slowly go mad from a lack of mental stimulation, then F would probably keep detailed accounting records of each transaction and pass them on to G. G might feel gracious and upgrade F to a 10x10 cell with a window.
Granted, most of these options are available with cash, but you don't have the transaction record which shows you who F is. In this way, bitcoin is easier to trace than cash.
Well that was just a simple example with round numbers. In reality you will have thousands and thousands of such transactions all going to seemingly random wallets with random amounts, and then to ten thousand different ones, back and forth. They will look like real transactions too.
You can't possibly track something like that. Most wallets don't have any names attached to them.
And even in this simple example you don't know who F, X and Z are and how to find them. They are just wallet numbers.
Thus, whole bitcoin user base will be thrown into a jail if the Sheep Marketplace owner is smart enough to spend significant time parsing his coins around.
That's what tumblers do. It only works if both A and B contribute the same sum, of course, and that means if you have 93 million dollars to tumble, you need other people to contribute another 93 million.
Which no one will, on such a short notice. Thus you end up owning both A and B, in which case the mixing is useless.
The chance of that at this point is practically nil. The owner has been doxed, both the FBI and Czech police have been thoroughly notified, and the blockchain movements suggest the owner is panicking and no longer thinking straight (who on earth moves 96k btc through a mixer in a day? that shows they either don't understand the idea of mixing or they are too frantic to realize the futility of it).
The authorities certainly do care about nailing Sheep's owner. Tarbell wouldn't be involved if they didn't care. Of course, they won't be returning any of the bitcoins to Sheep users...
These are some expensive lessons being learned. Bitcoin and other crypto can solve most of these problems. 2-of-3 multisig escrow transactions should be required on marketplaces.
What's the point of using BT if it isn't totally anonymous like people say it is? I thought the main draw of using BT is it's totally anonymous. I'm not being sarcastic at all either when I ask that.
It is not anonymous, in the sense that the transaction history of a wallet is public info. If that transaction history can identify you, you are not anonymous.
The point if bitcoin is that it is decentralized and no entity can affect or effect a transaction apart from the holder of the private key. As long as you can keep your key secret, no government or bank can seize your funds or prevent you from spending them.
Anonymity is possible through laundering techniques that obfuscate the transaction history. But if you provide an address to the recipient of the coins or purchase the coins with a bank account, your anonymity is limited by the privacy protections of the person who ships your goods or of your bank.
If you mine your coins or earn them in a way that does not require the disclosure of your identity and spend them at places that do not require any identifiable information, it is very anonymous.
47 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 98.1 ms ] threadAnd then another blockchain was tracked. (the 90m one) And transactions all end all being chopped up, and redistriuted, with the largest amounts going into wallets like this:
https://blockchain.info/nl/address/1P7hjN2J119r2MoT14PwnvtNk... This
Is this code for vigilante justice?
Can you explain?
[0] http://www.reddit.com/r/SheepMarketplace/comments/1rvlft/i_j...
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/apr/22/business/la-fi-tn-re...
Do you actually believe that? Because you might want to seek professional help if you do, that is delusional at best.
In theory, all it needs is one single non-cooperating gambling or dice site: 1) Split your illegal income up into 10 different addresses 2) Use each address for gambling with a 10 percent chance of winning and 1000% return in case of winning 3) Repeat a couple of times.
That's what the thief done. But a user on reddit seemed to track it all the way through the tumbler[1]
[1]http://www.reddit.com/r/SheepMarketplace/comments/1rvlft/i_j...
Now, maybe he could manage the full 96k btc if he used multiple laundries over many months, but that is time he does not have.
Imagine wallets A,B,F,X,Z.
A contains your money.
B contains somebody else's money.
Move the money as follows, 1BTC in each transaction:
Now you have 1BTC in X and in Z, but there's absolutely no way of telling where they came from. All you can say is they came from F. From now on X and Z are anonymous.And then, you can simply sell bitcoins for cash on localbitcoins. It's pretty untraceable.
For instance, let's say that A wants to send bitcoins stolen from G to X and B wants to send other bitcoins to Z. G simply approaches F and says "You stole my bitcoins. As punishment, I'm going to chain you to a mattress in a 6x6 cell until you confess." That leaves F two choices. F can stand for his principles, keep quiet, and serve as an object lesson to all other potential anonymizers.
However, if F doesn't want to slowly go mad from a lack of mental stimulation, then F would probably keep detailed accounting records of each transaction and pass them on to G. G might feel gracious and upgrade F to a 10x10 cell with a window.
Granted, most of these options are available with cash, but you don't have the transaction record which shows you who F is. In this way, bitcoin is easier to trace than cash.
You can't possibly track something like that. Most wallets don't have any names attached to them.
And even in this simple example you don't know who F, X and Z are and how to find them. They are just wallet numbers.
Nawww, that is unrealistic, even for FBI.
Which no one will, on such a short notice. Thus you end up owning both A and B, in which case the mixing is useless.
Bitcoin has been mostly good for promoting the Ponzi scheme style of business operation. Bitcoin businesses are divided into exactly two types:
- those that have absconded with all customer funds
- those that are planning to abscond with all customer funds
The chance of that at this point is practically nil. The owner has been doxed, both the FBI and Czech police have been thoroughly notified, and the blockchain movements suggest the owner is panicking and no longer thinking straight (who on earth moves 96k btc through a mixer in a day? that shows they either don't understand the idea of mixing or they are too frantic to realize the futility of it).
Earlier HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6828620
The point if bitcoin is that it is decentralized and no entity can affect or effect a transaction apart from the holder of the private key. As long as you can keep your key secret, no government or bank can seize your funds or prevent you from spending them.
Anonymity is possible through laundering techniques that obfuscate the transaction history. But if you provide an address to the recipient of the coins or purchase the coins with a bank account, your anonymity is limited by the privacy protections of the person who ships your goods or of your bank.
If you mine your coins or earn them in a way that does not require the disclosure of your identity and spend them at places that do not require any identifiable information, it is very anonymous.